At FMS Global News, there’s a recap of an abstract on a recent study examining fibro patients and job loss. The researchers looked at 136 fibro patients in Scotland (along with comparable numbers of controls) through a questionnaire about work history as well as clinic and GP visits for medical treatment.
What the researchers found:
RESULTS: Significant number of patients with FMS (46.8%) reported that they lost their job because of the disease, compared with only 14.1% of controls (P < 0.00001). There was no significant difference in health system utilization between patients with FMS and other clinic controls in a subset of patients surveyed. CONCLUSION: Fibromyalgia is significantly associated with reports of working disability. Reasons for this decreased employment need to be investigated. The impact on the health system appeared to be the same as for patients with known specific organic diseases with regard to the number of general practitioner or hospital visits.
That’s probably not news to fibro patients in general. It’s sort of hard to put on your game face at the office when you feel rather like you’ve been run over by a Mack truck on the way into work. But it certainly raises some social/political issues that should be addressed - such as, the process of obtaining disability benefits and why it’s still so hard to show you qualify when “you don’t look sick.”
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds
BlogoSquare